TEP, working alongside Pollard Thomas Edwards Architects, has helped secure planning permission for a new residential development of 250 units on a brownfield site in central Cambridge.
TEP’s landscape proposition has instituted a creative, thoughtful resolution to issues relating to play provision, drainage and edge conditions on a brownfield site, contributing to Cambridge Investment Partnership’s ongoing initiative to enhance provision of affordable, contemporary housing within the city.
The proposal is underpinned by a multi-faceted SuDS offering that simultaneously addresses surface water drainage whilst providing visual interest and play opportunities: planted swales and rain gardens run throughout the parkland that forms the spine of the development, and a significant proportion of the site’s hard surfaces will be permeable. Together these interventions divert rainwater to the wetland area at the northern end of the site, where water will either percolate naturally into the ground or be discharged into the surface water sewer at a controlled rate.
Play opportunities on-site are diverse, and include a formal equipped area towards the south of the main open space and a range of more informal opportunities, including on the playful undulating landforms immediately south of the wetland area that also serves as an attenuation basin in the event of a severe flood event.
The intention is that play opportunities on the Cromwell Road site will attract residents from further afield. With this principle of interconnectivity in mind, tree planting along the entrance roads provide a visual link to the open space for the neighbouring community, while the quiet streets form part of the wider network of pedestrian and cycling links throughout the city, particularly when future phases of the Chisholm Trail are implemented.
